What are the consequences of removing DuckDuckGo browser from my laptop?

Well, let's dig into this...

'I have DuckDuckGo...' can be interpreted in two ways..

1) you have installed the DuckDuckGo browser

2) you use DuckDuckGo as your default/preferred search engine.

At a high level, DuckDuckGo promises a higher level of privacy protection, and it does this a few ways.

If you only use their search engine, DuckDuckGo blocks results that link to malicious sites, and it obfuscates your searches so that it's harder for sites to track your searches/interests - by contrast, Google (and every other search engine) track what you search for and use that data to profile you.

Example - you use Google to search for flights to Tokyo. Now Google knows you're interested in travel to Japan, and pretty soon you'll start to see ads related to other flights, hotels, transportation, tourist activities, etc. in Japan.

Maybe that's useful, maybe it's not. DuckDuckGo masks that search so that your travel plans are not so transparent.

So, the first consequence of not using DuckDuckGo for searches is that you'll start to see a lot more content tengentially related to things you've searched.

For many users, managing search is enough, but if you click through that search for flights to Tokyo to a booking site, there's nothing preventing that site from sharing your travel plans. DuckDuckGo Search only influences the search results, not what you do once you click past that.

That's where the DuckDuckGo browser comes in. It makes it harder for sites to track your activity beyond search. So after you book your flight, that data is masked from other sites, so you shouldn't get (as much of) the related content a you would have done previously.

In addition, the DuckDuckGo Browser actively blocks malicious content, trackers, popups, etc.

So the consequence of not using the DuckDuckGo browser, and using something like Safari, Chrome, etc. is that it's easier for other sites to track your interest. That isn't to say it's your online life is suddenly an open book, though. Both Safari and Chrome have features designed to limit nefarious content. For example, Google Search has a 'Safe Search' option which can exclude certain content from search results. Both browsers have an 'incognito' or 'private' browsing mode which doesn't record your history and blocks most trackers. And both have some degree of preference settings around cross-site tracking, fraudulent site detection, etc.

Finally you can enable iCloud's private browsing so that Safari routes web requests through Apple's network to help mask your location and IP address (web sites see Apple's IP address as the source of the request, not your own).

So, the consequence of not using the DuckDuckGo browser is that more of your online activity (beyond simple searches) can be exposed and tracked by other sites, depending on how you have your system configured.

Nothing. You can use any other web browser you want.

I would never, not even for a moment, recommend Chrome to anyone. Note below about their 'incognito' or 'private' browsing mode lie. Safari goes out of its way to privatize your web usage.

Chrome is a known, massive resource hog. On top of that, from the moment you turn your Mac on to the time you turn it off, it is constantly sending anonymized data of your computer and web usage to Google's servers. Chrome doesn't even have to be running. The keystone agents…

/Library/LaunchDaemons/google.keystone.agent.plist

/Library/LaunchDaemons/google.keystone.xpcservice.plist

…do that by launching apps buried within the Chrome app, which load at startup. One of them is just for checking for updates to Chrome. The other is for all-the-time data harvesting.

And then there's this.

We don't allow any software written by Google on our Macs. Not Chrome, Google Earth, or anything else. Google's real business is collecting marketing data. You are their unwilling and unpaid source for it when you use any of their junk. If Safari isn't a browser you care much for, try Firefox or Brave. If you have a Google/Gmail account, you do not need Chrome to access it online. You can do that from any browser.

Brave in particular is an excellent replacement for Chrome. It’s built on the same open-source Chromium web code, but without any of Google Chrome’s intrusive data harvesting. One thing that makes Brave a better alternative are dumb web sites (like some banks) which insist you use Chrome for access. In almost all cases, Brave also works.

And yet another reason to never allow any app written by Google on your computer.

Google told users that when using incognito/private mode, Chrome would not track your usage, or collect data. They lied. It did anyway. Google has now agreed to settle the 2020 lawsuit with a five billion dollar fine.

But even so, according to another article on the lawsuit, that 5 billion is still a drop in the bucket to what Google has made on the collected data.

> I would never, not even for a moment, recommend Chrome to anyone. Note below about their 'incognito' or 'private' browsing mode lie. Safari goes out of its way to privatize your web usage.

I don't disagree at all.

In the context of 'alternatives to DuckDuckGo' though, it's still an option that most people would encounter, especially if the OP is focussed on 'search engine' rather than 'browser app', which isn't clear from the post, so I felt it worth mentioning.

In the context of 'alternatives to DuckDuckGo' though, it's still an option that most people would encounter, especially if the OP is focussed on 'search engine' rather than 'browser app', which isn't clear from the post, so I felt it worth mentioning.

Ah. Thanks for the clarification. And my post sounded like using a Buick to swat a fly, but I really just dumped a boilerplate I wrote about Chrome. May as well cover everything bad about it in one response.

And after all that, I still use Google as my search engine in Safari. I've tried the others, and Google almost always returns more accurate results. You're giving up some tracking just doing that, but at least Google can't track every single thing I do as it would through Chrome.

Even Brave added some tracking a year or so back. You can turn it off, but you have to know it's there.

Settings > Privacy and security

Then on the right hand side, turn these three sliders off.